Some thoughts and advice from the editors at Nature Methods on communicating with us and our reviewers, particularly on matters of disagreement.

In the over nine years that we at Nature Methods have been interacting with authors and reviewers we have experienced a great variety of communication strategies. Some work well…others don’t. In our October Editorial we discuss how neglecting to word criticism productively can undermine the value of the criticism and short-circuit this critical aspect of scientific discourse.

In the three posts that follow we provide practical advice for communicating with editors and reviewers during three critical steps of the publication process. These are: the cover letter, the rebuttal letter and the appeal letter. We hope you find these guides useful and encourage readers to comment on the points made and suggest dos and don’ts of their own.

How to write a cover letter
How to write a rebuttal letter
How to write an appeal letter

Update: It has been suggested that we write a dos and don’ts for reviewers. We agree this could be just as useful for improving the peer review process, possibly more so, and hope to be able to provide this soon.